Many seating accessories are intended to protect the seats, not the objects placed on the seats. Usually in the form of seat covers, they are also intended to be put on the seats for an extended period of time, and are cumbersome to be installed on the seats, or removed from the seats, or carried around. As a result, very few seating accessories are intended for temporary placement of a living object on a seat.
Temporary placement of a living object on a seat is very important on many occasions, changing the diaper of a child being one such occasion, which can be a challenge at home, let alone when on the road, or anytime the parent/caretaker is away from more permanent diaper changing stations. The problem is especially acute when the parent/caretaker is traveling with the child in a car. Even though many retail outlets have diaper changing stations, the entire diaper changing process can take a long time: the parent must first find the retailer, park the car, unload the car seat/stroller, pack the uncooperative child into the stroller, and then proceed into the retailer in order to change the child. In addition, if the parent has more than one child, it becomes difficult to be forced to move both children out of the car in order to take care of one child's diaper. This becomes especially difficult if the other child is sleeping: the parent would have to wake up that child to take both children out of the car to do a diaper change. Further still, there is the problem of hygiene. Notwithstanding the best intentions of a parent or retailer, the public restroom can be a festering cauldron of bacteria and other potential diseases and sources of infection. Therefore, there is a need for an apparatus that allows temporary placement of a child on a convenient seat (e.g., a seat in one's own car) and changing the child's diaper on the seat.
Changing an infant in a car is not impossible, but there are at least three main problems parents face when trying to do this without the aid of some apparatus. Primarily, most car seats are “bucket” style (i.e., the rearmost portion of the seat is lower than that of the front portion) such that the car seat angles downward at the backrest, causing the child to roll over. This makes the task of changing a diaper difficult, especially when the infant's neck is not yet strong, because the face of the infant can get pressed against the backrest. In addition, when the legs of the child get stronger, they typically push against the waist of the parent or struggle with the parent, causing the child to push their heads into the seatbelt buckle, console, or even worse, the infant car seat base, which is typically positioned in the center of the back or rear seats. Furthermore, when the child reaches teething/grabbing age, it becomes increasingly difficult to change a diaper without distraction.
There have been attempts to provide a substantially level and horizontal surface upon which to change an infant's diapers, such as the cushions disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,852,838 for use with sloped vehicle seats. However, such attempts cannot fully solve all of the problems with in-car diaper changing described above. In addition, because the angle provided by such cushions is fixed, they are not versatile and can only work with vehicle seats with a “matching” slope. Furthermore, the cushions need a separate storage space in the car and, unless covered or put in another bag, are unsightly to carry around.